Parasiticide

Kill Rock Stars; 2006

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At one point on Parasiticide, Sherry Fraser gets at the heart Two Ton Boa, her long-running but low-output rock outfit, like so: "It's a one woman show." So goes the deliberately titled "Herarchy"; it sums up her up outfit. Whether or not you know her band's back story-- 1999's debut EP and its warm critical reception, the ensuing years of bipolar disorder and staunched creativity, the recent tentative return-- its weight is easily felt throughout Parasiticide. The album, released last year, begins with an unforgiving bass grind and a blunt declaration: "Something's cracked/ Inside/ Like the liberty bell."

Fraser makes deeply unhappy music and employs very little art to disguise that fact. Though Two Ton Boa is ostensibly a full band-- at least in the studio, and on the road-- Fraser writes the songs, plus the parts for every instrument; to listen to one of her records is to enter very much into her headspace. This is uncomfortable. Her lyrics are blunt and awkward, the music follows suit-- all low register bass and toms, no guitar, and no relief from the plodding slow tempo she employs on every song. Parasiticide's few flourishes are equally gothic: protesting cello plucks, church-carnival ghostly organ, one bass pattern laid solidly over another.

There is no interaction or interplay to speak of on Parasiticide. So though the band's rumbling palate and dual bass charge might sound like Noxagt or godheadSilo or any other economic, bass-heavy band, Two Ton Boa's songs have groove but they don't, for any reason, move. When, on "Cyanide", Fraser lets loose with a playful "o-o-o-o-o-oh," it's mostly just more percussion; you know it came off the page that way. No fewer than three songs-- "Herarchy", "Gumshoe", and "Bad Seed"-- start with formalist schoolyard rhymes and chants, the kind of thing kids skip rope to or use to mock one another. This is a pattern that Fraser grows up rather than relinquishes-- her songs are proscribed, tight around the edges on purpose.

Some of this emerges from a strong strain of feminism: The transposition of the classically girly or feminine into art. The rest of it is revenge: Fraser pulls out the venom and casual cruelty embedded in these catechisms and spits it back. Sure enough, the rhyme will drop away and Fraser will swagger in, intoning accusations as she arrives: "That's you!"

So Parasiticide is moving but also intimidating and repulsive-- Fraser's work is all rough edges. There's the vocabulary-- there is no possible way to enjoy the line "You always obfuscate/ With your mendacious games" quite as much as she does-- the unrelenting depression, and the musical base, pushy and awkward as it is. Call it riot grrl or goth or, as one previous reviewer in these pages did, Evanescence-- it's not easy going. Fraser's new record is tough to love but easy to respect, a deal she's likely proud to offer.